observations

We’re wanting the generous spirit of time to set us free, thinking that holding ourselves hostage to the past is going to release some mature spark, some heated imagination, sear two hearts, a melding into a pretty story for a harlequin romance.

We wake up to the sunrise to find we haven’t been made beautiful, yet. We succumb to this committment and the ticking of time and throw another decade on the fire.

Maybe we search for depth in our bond, maybe we struggle to walk from the temptations we think pull us from the grey of rights and wrongs. We keep score, we try to speak our truth, we rail against conformity.

Oh yes, we have duty, we have dreams that bind.

When two forms fit and believe together, both can blossom.

I’m on no journey.

I don’t need to learn from pain.

I don’t require truth to be revealed through the darkest times, through tears, through great loss, or struggle or some beating to death of my spirit so I can rise from the ashes.

I firmly reject all of it. I am not so much growing, being transformed, meditating or medicating myself into my tomorrow face.

Instead, we are being revealed. We are open to loving, believe what has been missing in adventures previous is the alchemy, the undeniable heat we feel when limbs are a fraction of a space from his and we radiate an aching need to bring chemicals in line with impracticalities.

Love is not what is created by a scene or by the thrill of the meeting or by the possibilities of feeling something other than numb.

Simple desire – desire to bring our best and all our flaws to each moment- this is how emotional availability matures.

Damn bodice rippers, dammit all romance genre…the sex isn’t love. What we had was lovely. Yes.

It was perfect for the time we were in. It was meaningful and necessary and at times beautifully delicious. But it was always on this precipice of urgency, a route to solve a problem in a marriage or to work through a missing developmental piece of being a good partner…. it wasn’t lasting because I wanted you to change- and believe, me, I wanted to be changed. And I was willing to change FOR you.

That’s good for growth but not sustainable.

I don’t believe love is unconditional. I do believe Love is natural and love is necessary and love is undeniable. And it takes two.

Even now, when I examine my history, my growth, my lovers, I find I am not in control. Not at all. Never was.

Like this:

Sit down with me in the creperie, the sweet and savory tucked together and nestled on your plate like lessons in life.

Your grown child holds her baby in her lap. You have said goodbye to your lover. Your tea is hot, your heart is shivering. Your world is both vibrant and numb.

Sip coffee with me the garden where the living ivy overtakes brick walls, the solid clay softening as the tiny fingers of the vine grasp daily for a taste of the rays. The courtyard scene is dappled with the sun shining on the grey and the white heads of the ancient ones, these couples, together for what they believe is one lifetime. These regulars, they steady each other, make habits of rituals in the rising each day, the sipping of coffee, the sharing of the front page, the endless reflection, wisdom, appreciation.

The gentle banter of observation erupts with stories of the way-back-whens in response to the infant, someone’s grandchild, oh yes, mine! mewing her needs without reservation. Those baby sounds- the crying, the giggles, the babbling of toddlers all bring to mind the endless opportunities grasped and missed in the raising of their own.

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Gentle wind, forgive the intrusion, the decay of my being seeping in, catching, swirling, landing where the lavender fields grow, hiding the whispers of a story which will not be told.

You- talking with me, across a table, about anything, everything, but talking, conversing, observing, listening; the banter, the play, this and that, the easing, the flirting, the suggestions.of.questionable intent.

3 hour lovemaking sessions.

Already miss the random facts, the interest in learning, the political sparring, the stories of your trash talking team mates and your blood on the ground.

Might miss your history, your endless defenses of NRA, conservative, neanderthal political views. You may wish to add a lie detector expert to your panel of judges. Your friends have weighed in no matter what you have paid them in laughs and distractions. Your history has told on you from altars with one of two standing alone wearing white. My suspicions were multiplied, laid on the table where poker faces were no longer needed.

I was grateful for honesty, perspective and the freedom to claim fun while it gives.

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Fuck you for threatening me. Go and find someone you would not dump upon my return. Take your own fucking threat and make it your future.

Happy birthday, Lynne Rae Perkins! The Pittsburgh native studied art in college and didn’t consider writing until an art director asked if she had a story to go along with her drawings. Perkins discovered she did indeed have a story—the result was Home Lovely, her first published children’s book. (goodreads.com)

Like this:

She’s asked the question in the silence of the night, in the dew touched mornings while looking out at all she acquired- sliced orange, bagel and tea, little birds taking the nectar from the blossoms of the porch. She has everything we aspire to create- home, hearth, health.

Not enough, the languorous moments, times of celebration, family who loves, sometimes with envy all that has been birthed in this princess fashion of a life.

Starter lives grown inside white picket fences, dragonflies fly, hummingbird hum, chrysalis shines. See her mouth open to the sky, she dances only when she’s alone.

Little time invested in the calendar of living, she’s counted the hours, the minutes, the turns of the earth. Shameless and ungrateful, still stubborn-ugly, seeking something to tell her she’s arrived.

Cries, ceaselessly wanted –until she’s craving escape.

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Feed my mind. Feed my mind. Feed my mind. Before I eat up your heart and spit out your years.

Like this:

Twisting around inside this self, turning heads and steering sights, I’m wandering in the words and ways of the everyday. There’s a longing and a restlessness that doesn’t require action. Simple awareness of the moment, a desire to be seen but not always heard. I take it in. I take you in. I take in what finds me.

A grandfather walks toward the coffee shop with his young charge while noting the beautiful woman wanting to cross the same threshold. The younger version of himself, both the one he is inside, that young boy who never leaves his ever-aging body and the tow headed grandson spending the morning with him meet at the doorway.

The young woman, hair up, heels on, summer dress flowing remains unseen until Grandfather’s wisdom and manners step forward into the day. These two young men cross paths in the few seconds it takes to open the door wide allowing her to enter before them. With effortless ease, a simple smile and a nod to the young woman, the simple act of pausing becomes a learning moment across generations.

It is the same morning. It is the same coffee shop. It is the same sun shining down onto the day. She is taking in the learning. She has her eye on the entry. She sits at the littlest table, next to the window, her bottomless mug refilled, swirling the cream into the darkness of the cocoa infused roast. She craves the opportunity to seize perspective, to perhaps validate the notion there is something to be gained in the present moment. She is hopeful.

Another car pulls to the curb. The woman driving is white haired and tinier than she was years ago, her eyes are not as blue, her shoulders are not as wide. Her hands, still steady, hold the jumble of keys needed to access their current world including car keys, the silver one that opens the front door of the cabin, the post office box, the copy of one that opens the back door to their daughter’s house.

The sedan is parked curbside. The passenger door opens and a man with hair not as dark as it once was, with hands not as steady as they once were grips a cane that supports legs not as strong as he’d like them to be. The gentlemen steps onto the sidewalk, turns to her, watches her make her way to the cement beside her and without fanfare, turns to the cafe entrance and deftly, expertly, hustles hips that function just as they once did, just a step ahead of his still beautiful partner and gracefully opens the door for this treasured woman in his life.